Lance's 225 gal tank

[hillegom]

Glad the affair with the cuda turned out alright. They are scary when that big.
What part of Mexico?

[Lance]

Originally Posted by lastlight

Glad to hear you still got in the water after your ordeal over there! Too bad about the monti but hopefully you can salvage anything. After that it's only time =)

That is freaky about the cuda...brings me back to my last trip to mexico and I stumbled upon a school of large tarpons. Not being an ID whiz I just saw a bunch of 5 - 6 foot fish maybe 20 feet away and I seriously almost shat myself.

Ear seems to be pretty good now Brett. Flight home kinda hurt though.
As for the Cap, it was getting too big and I was thinking of fragging some good sized chunks from it. Guess I have to now.

I'm not exactly the most experienced underwater guy and I always wondered what I'd do if I ran into something scary down there. Would I be brave or a chicken ****? I guess I fall somewhere in between Rocky Balboa and Richard Simmons.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by hillegom

Glad the affair with the cuda turned out alright. They are scary when that big.
What part of Mexico?

Caribbean side. Near Akumal.

[Lance]

Originally Posted by muck

Welcome back Lance!
Hows your ear doing? Hope the plane ride didn't aggravate it too much.

Those barracudas are scared of nothing. I had a similar experience while snorkeling one trip out there. I was definitely not too thrilled when the cuda gave me the stare down without flinching. Lucky for me he didn't feel like following though..

Glad to be back. The ear's pretty good.
Yeah, no fear in those fishies. I wish I had the camera with me but the wife had it at the time. Of course, I probably wouldn't have thought to get any pics. More interested in getting the hell away from it.

[PoonTang]

Welcome back buddy, I thought it had been kinda quiet around here lately. Next time your over I will show you my picture of the school of barricuda that my son and I swam through when I was in the Bahamas last summer. Must have been a thousand of them and then when we came out the other side we wound up right in the lap of a 5' reef shark. Whoo Hooo fun times!

[Lance]

Originally Posted by PoonTang

Welcome back buddy, I thought it had been kinda quiet around here lately. Next time your over I will show you my picture of the school of barricuda that my son and I swam through when I was in the Bahamas last summer. Must have been a thousand of them and then when we came out the other side we wound up right in the lap of a 5' reef shark. Whoo Hooo fun times!

Wow! Sounds scary......... I mean exciting!

[Lance]

I forgot to mention how many Lionfish I saw. I knew they were getting to be a real problem in the Atlantic, but I didn't realize just how many there are. In some areas I snorkeled in there was literally a Lionfish under every other rock ledge. As a reasonable guess I would say I counted over thirty of them in an area no larger than 1500 sq ft.

[Lance]

So this is what I came home to from my vacation:

As you can see the big pink Cap is about 50% dead. I was thinking maybe Mont-eating Nudis but I couldn't see good enough as the Cap is in the center of the tank. I broke off a good sized chunk and examined it; but found nothing. Any ideas?




After fragging, this is what I'm left with. I dipped all the frags in a freshwater bath and then a coral dip. They will remian in Qt for awhile until I'm sure they're ok.




This is what that part of the tank looks like now with the cap removed. Although I have had that cap for 3 years and grown it from a frag colony to a nice sized colony, it was actually getting too big and shading out my Crocea. It hurts to lose it but now I have space for more corals.

[fishoholic]

More space is always good, sorry the monti didn't do well though. Glad the barracuda didn't get the better of you, and that you had a good trip over all

[Lance]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

More space is always good, sorry the monti didn't do well though. Glad the barracuda didn't get the better of you, and that you had a good trip over all

Thanks Laurie. Yeah we had a good time in spite of a few not-so-nice incidents. I can't figure out what happened to the Cap. All other corals are fine, including other Montis.